Across the Three Pagodas Pass. Yoshihiko Futamatsu

      My detailed knowledge of wartime events in the Far East came from an invitation to write the biography of Colonel Sir Philip Toosey who was the senior British Officer present during the building of the so-called Bridge on the River Kwai.

      Sir Philip was a prominent businessman who became the Liverpool Agent for the merchant bank Baring Brothers. As such. his duties included acting as a non-executive director for many of the firms advised by Barings and amongst these was Liner Holdings – the parent company of the Elder Dempster Shipping Line.¹ As the official historian of this enterprise I was already acquainted with Sir Philip and had always enjoyed a good personal relationship with him. I was aware of the fact that he had been taken prisoner-of-war by the Japanese during the Second World War but until he approached me I had little idea of his special role as a POW and of the affection with which he was held by many former prisoners who knew him at that time.

      Sir Philip was a very private person who had no desire for publicity. It was only as a result of the film: The Bridge on the River Kwai² in which he was portrayed by Alex Guinness as a collaborator of the Japanese that he was persuaded to take action so that the real story could be told. Thus, in the years prior to his death in 1975 I was able to assess his records and obtain almost fifty hours of taped interviews.³ I was also able to visit many of the sites in Thailand and Malaya where Toosey had been a prisoner and there, and elsewhere, met many of the individuals who shared his experiences in various ways.

      As my academic interests in Japanese shipping and shipbuilding⁴ took me to Japan on several occasions I found it possible to interview a number of Japanese who had been involved in the building of the Bridge and Railway. One of these was Teruo Saitoh who, as the second in command at Tamarkan – the Bridge camp – was well known to Toosey and was an excellent source of valuable information.⁵ Two others, Yoshihiko Futamatsu and Renichi Sugano, were contacted as a result of an introduction by Carl Fritsche – an American pilot who I had met to discuss his bombing raids on the Kwai Bridge.⁶ This resulted in several meetings during which I learned much about their joint wartime careers in the 4^th Special Railway

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